This novel of emotional distance and alienation has a son and father visiting Germany.  They are flying back the body of Myriam, who has died of malnutrition. She was their sister and daughter.  The narrator’s father is frail but strong enough to have strong ideas about how to carry out the removal of the body back to the USA.  Unfortunately, the German authorities take their time, and the father and son have to spend time together while they wait. They are accompanied by Trish, who works at the American Consulate. They rent a place to live, rent a car, and explore the local area. So they encounter some characters and get to know each other a little.  But mostly they confront their own loneliness.  This is a family that hardly knows each other: the last time the narrator saw his family was 6 years ago. The father is retired, and the son lives in London.  He is divorced and lives alone.  He has no real friends and there’s nothing that sustains him or gives his life some direction apart from its own momentum.  He isn’t self-destructive like Myriam was, but her early death makes as much sense as his life.  Their father was an academic, and he wrote a scholarly volume on history, but his “popular” book on the Middle Ages was a failure. 

Munich Airport is an unusual novel, literary and bleak, showing a dispersed family, gathered together for a death, passing time in the airport. The narrator doesn’t seem to feel much loss at his sister’s death, but he is anxious and has strong reactions to the world.  He enjoys beautiful people and he remembers that his mother, now dead, was beautiful.  He finds many of the Germans he meets absurd.  He has achieved success in his life, and although he had some problems with alcohol, he has managed to change his behavior and he works out at the gym to keep himself in shape. He listens to classical music, Glenn Gould performing Bach, while he works out.  So he has plenty of interests and enthusiasms, but they seem shallow and amount nothing. It’s a story of the banality and senselessness of the modern world.

Not many readers will rush to join this world of lack of connection, where desperation is mostly unspoken but close to the surface.  But Munich Airport is distinctive in setting out this world with some force.

The performance by Kevin Stillwell for the unabridged audiobook is even-toned and clam, with a constant sense of irony and detachment.  There are a few moments when there seems to be emotion underneath his self-controlled voice.

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York